George John Armelagos

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George John Armelagos, (born May 22, 1936, Lincoln Park, Mich.—died May 15, 2014, Atlanta, Ga.), American anthropologist who was best known for his work with the remains of members of the ancient Nubian civilization as well as for being one of the founders of paleopathology, a discipline that examines how cultural practices affect patterns of health and disease in populations through time. After Armelagos earned a bachelor’s degree (1958) from the University of Michigan, he intended to become a physician, but he switched to anthropology and gained a master’s degree (1963) and a Ph.D. (1968) from the University of Colorado. He taught at the Universities of Utah and Massachusetts and later chaired the anthropology departments at the University of Florida and Emory University, Atlanta. Over the course of his career, he examined thousands of skeletons. Armelagos uncovered evidence that the origins of syphilis lay in yaws, a skin disease present in native North Americans. He argued that the yaws-causing bacterium could have mutated into the syphilis pathogen after early European explorers and their crews carried the bacterium home. He also discovered that a by-product of ancient Nubian beer brewing was tetracycline, a naturally occurring antibiotic that was unknown to science until 1948. Armelagos’s most famous book, Consuming Passions (1980, with anthropologist Peter Farb), explored the curious history of what humans had eaten over time. His other volumes include Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture (1984, edited with anthropologist Mark Cohen) and An Unnatural History of Emerging Infections (2013, with anthropologist Ron Barrett).